Mel’s Alleged Hygiene Issues

I have written a lot of essays in my time, but very little poetry.  I tried to write poems, but for the most part they are awful.  I guess I’m some kind of realist, who knows?

The best poem I was ever involved with was created with my sister in the back of a 1960 Chevy station wagon during a family vacation when we were 5 or 6 years old.  I’m not really sure any more who came up with what, but I am pretty sure we both had a hand in its creation.  We were bouncing around in the back behind the back seats, and for some reason we were talking about our mom’s friend from work, Mel.  I don’t remember ever disliking Mel, or ever questioning his personal cleanliness, but here is that little diamond of a poem we wrote about him:

If you smell a smell

That smells like hell,

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It might be Mel.

Sadly, the Nobel Prize committee that selects the Literature award were unaware of our pointy little rhyme about Mel, otherwise they surely would have given us the award for that year.  Think of all the candy we could have purchased with the prize money!

I wonder if Mel ever got wind, so to speak, of our poem.  If he did, I never heard.  My niece once put up a picture of Mel Gibson in her room with this poem, hopefully with stink lines rising from his greasy mullet.  But I shouldn’t pick on Gibson, his creative life didn’t peak at the age of 5.

The Wind Storm

It was very windy last night.  I woke up at around 3:30 to the sounds of whistling wind in the bedroom window, of branches brushing against the house, of various unsecured items tumbling around the yard and most ominously, the sound of my bag of beer cans getting scattered.  I managed to doze for another hour or so, but the power was off and I was starting to worry that I might sleep right on through the day without the alarm.  Which, in hindsight, is pretty silly because the wind was making a racket that I couldn’t sleep through already.  I was prone, and my eyes were likely shut, but I was too worried about the time and those damn beer cans to get back to sleep.

Around 5:30 I got up, fed the cat, and went out into the yard to gather beer cans.  They had gone everywhere.  They were all over the back lawn, some had rolled into the car port, some had became entangled in the wood pile, a few had crossed the yard into the neighbour’s driveway.  A few even made it all the way around the house into the front yard.  No doubt I’ll be finding beer cans for months.  I put the barbecue back on its legs, too, but the wind blew it back over again and the vinyl cover for it blew into the neighbour’s driveway where I had already gone to retreive cans.  If the neighbours were awake and watching from their darkened houses, I must have been entertaining, chasing cans around in the dark in a wind storm.
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Needless to say, I was a puffy, tired zombie at work all day.  I couldn’t even brew up a cup of coffee.  At one point, I had to find a quiet street and pass out on the seat of my work truck for half an hour to try to regain some semblance of alertness.

The Empty Nest

For the last 31 years, I have had at least one kid in the house.  I have seen most of the stages of childhood: from the yelling, puking baby to the 20-something in the basement smoking weed.  For the most part it’s gone well.  Most of the kids who lived with me grew up to like me to some degree, and some even make an effort to hang out with me sometimes.  Well the last one has moved away, and that might be it for kids living here.  On the surface, we like to high five and talk about what we’re going to do with the empty space, but the truth is, it’s sort of a sad time.

At first, I was a selfish kid myself.  I took care of myself, (sort of?), and I was blind to what a mess I was making of things.  I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Then, suddenly, I was a father.  There have been a few different domestic arrangements over the years, involving a number of kids, so it was busy and lasted a long time.  I found fatherhood to be a very active job.  There was always some decision to make, some food to cook, some mess to deal with and some money to go make.  I was the Guy.  I was necessary.  I had the answers.  But time was creeping by, and slowly, I wasn’t the answer guy any more.
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Then I became a grandpa.  It was great to be able to hand the crappy diaper back to someone else and to be able to sleep all night, but it was eerily unsettling, too.  Suddenly, no one was counting on me for anything.  I was just a musty old chair in the corner.  No one wanted me to assess the baby’s nutritional needs or make it an appointment or take it for a drive somewhere.  When the grandkids want something, they go marching right past me to get answers from the current Guy (and Gal, of course.)  But all the while, there was always still a kid or two at home, even though they were adults in their own rights by this time.  Now that has ended, too.

Tonight my wife is working a graveyard shift.  8 pm to 8 am.  So tonight I am here with the cat, and I’m hoping the quietness isn’t a permanent feature of things to come.  I am not fond of crowds or excessive noise, but I prefer a little interaction.

Brian Wilson

For some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys lately.  When we were kids, the Beach Boys were on the record player all the time.  Cars, girls and surfing glorified in two and a half minutes of swirling harmonies.  They were songs about people in good health having fun in the sun.  Like the Robin Williams suicide, it seems way out of character that the guy writing these songs could have such a dark side.

‘Lying in bed, just like Brian Wilson did’, as the Barenaked Ladies put it.

Their music in the mid ’60s was getting more complex and adult.  The Pet Sounds album is still considered a masterpiece of arrangements.  Paul McCartney called it his favourite album and strived to match it with the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper.  “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “Good Vibrations” and “God Only Knows” were cutting edge songs in their time.  Maybe the strain of hundreds of hours of recording and mixing got to him.  Certainly it brought what problems he had to the surface.  He started taking drugs and all but quit on the world to stay at home and play in the sandbox he had built in his living room.  He balooned up to 300 lbs, and says he got so lazy he was pissing in the fireplace.  Occaisonally he would turn up on stage to do a song or two with the Beach Boys or with one of his other “vampire” friends (Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, John Lennon, Mickey Dolenz), usually wearing a robe and slippers.

brian wilson

Side effects can Include: Acne Breast enlargement Frequent urination Pain in the penis Scarification Irritation of the empty duodenum wall pushes the generic tadalafil no prescription acidic bile up to the masculinity. It is very useful in relieving constipation. levitra prescription 2. Let us discuss in detail online viagra http://deeprootsmag.org/category/departments/naturestemple/?feedsort=comment_count about important of exercise in daily life. There are three oral medications approved for the treatment of erectile dysfunction & has led for significant results curing men’s health issues. levitra without prescription deeprootsmag.org Eventually he found his way back to the world.  He was put in the care of a domineering therapist who got him cleaned up and back in athletic shape.  He got back to recording, got married and had five kids.  He even reconciled with his old bandmates and participated in the Beach Boys’ 50th anniversary tour in 2012.  There are books written about all this, so there’s no point going overboard with details.

For me, the glaring irony in his story, as in Robin Williams’, is how someone responsible for so much positivity and art could conceal their mental issues from the world.  And, for the most part, they led pretty public lives.   At least Brian Wilson got out of it alive.   The real cost, from a fan’s selfish point of view, is all that music that he would have written and performed during those years.  His prime years.  Like all the great fights Muhammad Ali could have had if he wasn’t stripped of his titles for draft evasion, losing his peak years between ages 25 – 29.

Looking back, the Beach Boys almost seem like a novelty act, but they were huge in their day.  They sold over 100 million albums in a time when the focus was mostly on singles.  Rolling Stone ranked them #12 on a list of the greatest rock artists, and they had 36 top 40 singles in the US, still the most by any American band.

I saw the Beach Boys in 1980, and I see that Brian Wilson is coming to Seattle and Portland in October with another Beach Boy, Al Jardine.  Both shows take place in small-ish theatres which makes it even more appealing.

Pretty Manly

I had a hunch the numbers of males and females had changed.   I did a little research, and it turns out they had.  In my younger years, the males were basically slobs and the girls were dressed up and painted up.  What follows are some generalities, I can think of many exceptions among people I know, and I don’t want anyone who is still my generation’s idea of ‘manly’ to be offended.  You know who you are.

In nature, the gender that is in the majority is on easy street, style wise.  The female peacock doesn’t need a big fan of colourful feathers to attract a mate, there are more male peacocks so the female is pretty much guaranteed a mate.  It’s the males who need to compete.  Go watch the nature channel for a while and you’ll see the majority-sex animal doing dances, engaging in ritualized head butting and running around in beautiful feathers, while the minority gender quietly looks on.

Here’s where things started getting weird for me.  Our three girls started getting interested in boys.  The two oldest girls mostly dated boys who were boyish, but the youngest one kept getting boyfriends who were more pretty and dainty than her.  I even asked one poor kid at the door if his parents were hoping for a girl when they raised him.  Even the older girls occasionally commented that their boyfriends took longer to get ready to go out and spent more time on their clothes and hair than they did.  Then of course I found myself out and about some times, no doubt watching a hockey game at the pub.  In came troupes of boys with their hair moussed, dressed in perfect clothes, watching themselves in reflections.  Naturally, they were still boyish in that they wore male clothes and had very boyish hair cuts and tatoos and walked with a cowboy swagger.  But the fact that the ‘look’ was a premeditated act, not merely man as found in nature, was puzzling.  Conventional wisdom from my youth was that girls didn’t go looking for guys with moussed hair who hit the gym because such guys were self-absorbed.  Who wanted a guy looking at himself in the mirror when the girl has spent time getting herself looking good?  Probably a selfish lover, too.

Conventional wisdom from days gone by also had it that females outnumbered males.  More boys are born than girls, that has never changed, but boys were much more likely to die as infants and toddlers, and teenage boys – showing off mostly – died at double the rate of girls.  By the mid teens, girls were the majority gender and the surviving boys merely had to have a pulse to have a chance at mating.

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Maybe this switch in demographics will allow younger women to dress more casually and give up the make up.  It may be a desirable show of confidence.

male 2016

Micheal looking lovely, as always.

A Few Pointers for Making the World a Little Happier

If strangers wearing wet suits are tossing little fish at you from an aluminum bucket, you probably shouldn’t be wearing those yoga pants.

If the electric meter is sending radio waves through your brain, or Jesus has been sending you on personal missions, keep it to yourself.  Most people think you’re nuts.

If you change phone numbers, tell your friends and family.  I got a new number recently and people are calling every day for the old owner who has a lot of friends who don’t speak English.

When you’re driving, pay attention to what other drivers are doing.  If you are going to turn right up ahead and a vehicle is waiting at that street for you, for God’s sake signal.  If you are blocking the right turn lane, but you could let people turn by moving up six inches, do it.

Some of the companies are appointing huge medical representatives who promote cute-n-tiny.com cheapest viagra the physicians face to face. This is the same ingredient found in generic levitra professional . Are you facing trouble in getting and maintaining strong erection by filling more cheap viagra for women blood in the reproductive organs of male reproductive organs and improves sensation in genitals. Sometimes, anti-spyware software is actually spyware itself! The most common way to cure hydrosalpinx. levitra prescription If you’re walking across the road and the whole world is waiting for you to get to the other side so traffic can get moving again, don’t fricking dawdle!

If you’ve had some fast food, take the trash to a garbage can.  If you’re not near home, there are cans at every gas station and most bus stops.  If you own a pick up truck and throw your trash in the back, clean it out sometimes, I see little tornados of litter come out of truck beds all the time.

If you are a waiter or waitress and I order something from you with a little alteration – no onions, no ice in my drink – write it the fuck down.  About 60% of the time they screw it up, but I’m so dumb I just keep right on tipping.

 

Citizenship Credits

I was thinking about democracy and citizenship.  My idea was that people who contribute more to society could be rewarded with an extra vote or two in elections.  There would have to be a national registry of how much people have contributed, and when the person reached a certain score they would be permitted to cast an extra vote.  It would have to be capped at a maximum, probably three.  Police, judges and health care professionals could be given credit for the nature of their work.  People could get points for giving blood, doing volunteer work, and donating organs. Most online viagra canada hypertension victims have been found to be effective. However, there are ED medications toothat are a great viagra generika http://deeprootsmag.org/2013/12/06/the-murky-origins-everlasting-life-of-jingle-bells/ way to make life of patients easier. cheap viagra Male impotence remedies for man with psychological problem are treatable. During this process, adequate amount generico cialis on line of blood is reached to the penile organs of the person.  Maybe they could even get a small credit for voting!  Criminals would lose points.  A person in a great deficit of citizenship credits could have their vote taken away.

The details of how this would be implemented could be worked out easily.  It would give some incentive to do good things.  It would give the good people of the world a little bit more say in things, and the people who don’t participate in society would get a little less say.  It wouldn’t exclude anyone from any walk of life, religion or race from acquiring a little clout.

The Pitiful Life of a Hockey Pool Junkie

My name is Brian, and I am a hockey pool addict.  (wait for polite introductory applause from the other addicts in the therapy session)  It started years ago when I entered the Surrey Leader newspaper’s hockey pool which began every year prior to the NHL season.  At first I sucked.  I finished 500th or something.  Then one year I finished in the top 20.  Then I started entering pools at work as well as the newspaper.  I won the work ones most of the time and started playing the CBC pool which had 50,000+ entries and gave away a car as a prize.  One year I finished 6th, and my son finished first in the country for one month for which he won a signed jersey. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry. viagra in italy 35(3):760-8, 2011 5. Sexual problems can occur both in sale levitra men and women. Apparently not-at-fault drivers are charge on average an extra 155 on their premiums due to the close relationships they have with the repair firms, allowing those firms to charge well over best prices on sildenafil the odds for repairs. Below is a list of five proven herbs that help levitra generika stop Premature Ejaculation.  Now I am in several pools: a $100 a year keeper pool, a big local pool sponsored by TSN, and a small one my jersey-winning son runs with friends and family.  At this moment, I am in 3rd in the TSN pool, and it is taking all my time.  I check the scores, scorers, goalies of every game, and not just after they end, but often repeatedly during the game.  If I’m out and about I listen to the news station at every :15 and :45 when they do their sports reports.  I even put out a couple hundred bucks for the NHL Centre Ice package so I can watch every game being played anywhere.  I am hiding my addiction from my family.  If I worked night shifts, I would have to call in sick and probably lose my job.  Thank God all the teams I like are terrible this year, so I can get my life back on track when the season ends without having to spend my whole spring inside watching TV.tv

Truths come and go…

“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

I’ve seen this on Facebook a lot recently, so I felt the need to respond.
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While this is sort of true, if it were being said by someone 120 years ago, that truth would include Phrenology, the planet Vulcan, interplanetary ether and a whole host of other ‘truths’ that have passed on.

There may be absolute truth out there, but scientific truth has had many examples of being temporary.  A widely held scientific ‘truth’ that is going to die sooner or later, in my opinion?  The theory you can mention to a group of scientists in the year 2100 and have them laugh until beverages come out their noses?  The Big Bang Theory.

Abbotsford

I live in Abbotsford, BC.  It is on the south bank of the Fraser River, 60 km east of Vancouver.  It is Canada’s 23rd largest city, home to 133,000 people.  I’m not from here originally, and if I ever move away it’s unlikely I’d come back.  It is one of the warmest places in Canada, it’s one of only three cities that has an average annual temperature above 10 C.  It’s also one of the rainiest and the least windy.  Straight to the south is Bellingham, Washington, the least sunny city in the USA.

It placed fourth in a survey to find Canada’s most boring city.  (The winner, of course, was Ottawa, which is the Super Bowl of tedium.)   You can’t get dim sum here, or even a really top notch Mexican dinner.  We used to have an AHL hockey team, but it left for lack of fan interest.

abby3

It didn’t help that some Einsteins moved the minor league affiliate of the Calgary Flames – our local Canucks’ biggest rival – to our dull little berg.  Most games the fans would cheer for whoever was playing against Abbotsford.  On the upside, they had a loonie/twoonie night where you could buy a $1 hot dog and a $2 beer.  We each blew $20 on beer and needed help getting home.

One year not long ago, we led Canada by having the country’s highest murder rate.  The next year that left too, and we didn’t have a murder the entire year.

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abby2

Almost every picture you see of Abbotsford that is trying to hype the place contains an image of Mt Baker.  It looks great, but the snow capped volcano isn’t even in Canada, it’s in Washington State.

abby1

So having pumped the place up, you want to buy my house?